


So private and so proud

by disjointed_scribblings



Series: the whole mix tape [2]
Category: Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Introspection, Light Angst, Musical References, Pining, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:54:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25619962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disjointed_scribblings/pseuds/disjointed_scribblings
Summary: In hindsight, Leo Bennet should have known better than to trust the answers he found on Google.Well, in hindsight, there were a lot of things he should have done differently.
Relationships: Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy
Series: the whole mix tape [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1857073
Comments: 7
Kudos: 89





	So private and so proud

In hindsight, Leo Bennet should have known better than to trust the answers he found on Google.

Well, in hindsight, there were a lot of things he should have done differently. But then again, some things were set in stone; maybe it would have all turned out the same anyway in the end.

For one thing, there was no way he’d ever have said no to going with his Aunt Grace and cousin Eddie to tour universities during Eddie’s March Break. Aunt Grace was fun and generous and warm in a way that Leo’s mother wasn’t, and Eddie was in grade 11, eager and funny and whip-smart, and Leo didn’t get to see either of them often enough.

The truth was, Leo almost always jumped when he had a chance to get out of town. He loved his family, mostly, but the thing about a family farm was that you were living and working with them day in and day out, and that would get to be too much even if you had the best family in the world. And the Bennets were hardly that. Besides, Leo didn’t love Longbourn Dairy Farm like his brother John did, didn’t find the work fulfilling like his sister Mary. The best part about farming, for Leo, was how much time it gave him to listen to music and audiobooks.

So four days away from the farm came as something of a relief.

They drove down to Rosings University on Monday. Rosings was a venerable institution verging on snobbery, located in a town that took pride in its early Victorian stone architecture. The architecture was impressively preserved, but it was really the only thing Hunsford had going for it. (Or maybe that was just Leo’s bias—the last time he’d been here hadn’t exactly ended well.) They met up with Leo’s good buddy Lucas for dinner, and since Lucas’s housemate was the administrative assistant to a dean, they got more inside gossip than they cared for. Leo only half-listened to his buddy spin tales about departmental committees and research grant backstabbing. The rest of his energy was spent trying not to think about the last time he’d come to visit. Thank God there wasn’t enough room for them all to stay overnight in Lucas and Collin’s duplex.

Leo’s alma mater was next, on Tuesday afternoon. The University of Cheapside had a great agricultural sciences program and a sprawling campus that seemed smaller now than it had when he’d first set foot there at 18. He tried to show Eddie and Aunt Grace his favourite study space in the library, but it had been renovated in the decade since Leo had been there, with new furniture in all different configurations. New buildings had cropped up, too, sprinkled haphazardly across the campus, mostly glass and without enough heft to stand up to the imposing Brutalist structures that made up the campus core.

On Wednesday morning, they drove to Lambton.

Leo had been on edge ever since he’d learned that Pemberley University was on Eddie’s list of potential schools. But it was a choice that made sense, a university of solid reputation that had the programs Eddie was interested in. Leo had googled the size of campus and the student population four times before leaving on this trip to convince himself how unlikely he would be to run into someone accidentally during a campus tour.

So, he was (mostly) relaxed on the drive into Lambton, right up until Eddie exclaimed from the backseat, “Oh cool, Mom! Did you know they have a natural history museum right on campus?”

Leo jerked his head so hard he cut his lip on the plastic lid of his coffee cup.

“Is that so?” said Aunt Grace, a bit distracted as she switched lanes to make their exit.

Thank God that she was the one driving, because Leo would have put them in the ditch. For that matter, thank God she was distracted at that moment as well, or she’d have noticed Leo losing his cool. His lip was bleeding now. He went hunting in the glove box for a kleenex.

“Yeah, the Pemberley Museum of Natural History, it says,” Eddie continued, oblivious. “Can we go after the tour?”

“We’ll see, sweetheart. Do you have to pay to get in?”

As Eddie read through the online brochure looking for that information, Leo dabbed at his lip and fought to return his heart to a normal rhythm. The Pemberley Museum of Natural History was the last place in the universe he should go.

Aunt Grace snapped her fingers as Eddie read out a section about recent renovations to the museum. “Oh, I thought that name sounded familiar. Pemberley Museum. Didn’t Johnny say the curator was up in Meryton over the summer while the renovations were going on, getting samples or something? Did you meet them, Leo? Maybe they’d give us a special tour?”

Jesus.

“Yeah, Leo, that would be awesome!”

Jesus _Christ_.

Leo didn’t want to crush his cousin’s dreams, but he also could not imagine a circumstance in which the curator of the Pemberley Museum would give him a special tour — or special treatment on anything, other than maybe a special cold shoulder. Or a special (and probably deserved) slap in the face.

“I dunno, buddy,” Leo said slowly. “Do curators even give tours? I think they’re more like managers. Besides, I barely know the curator, it’s not like we’re friends.”

This was an understatement. The first time he’d met the curator of the Pemberley Museum he’d overheard her call him “some unshaven hick with wandering hands”. The last time… he shifted uncomfortably in his seat remembering the last time he’d met Pemberley Museum’s curator.

Eddie’s interest in the museum was quickly forgotten when they drove onto the university campus and he pressed his face to the window to take in his surroundings. Leo took a breath of relief and turned to look out his own window — and lost his breath again.

Before today, Leo had envisioned the Pemberley University campus as something similar to Rosings — a compact, tightly contained network of century-old limestone buildings with creeping growths of ivy and oxidized copper roofs, a campus that felt the weight of its own prestige and clustered inward against change or modernity. But Lambton wasn’t Hunsford, and Pemberley wasn’t like Rosings at all.

Oh, there were still a few of those old stone buildings with the ivy and the copper — but they were intermingled with newer, fresher buildings, including a handful of brutalist stalwarts anchoring the campus down. The buildings were spaced nicely across wide green lawns, gently curving roads, walkways and stands of trees, even a small creek that ran through the campus.

It had the gravitas of Rosings without the pretension, the expanse of Cheapside without the disjunction.

“It’s so nice that they’ve been able to keep the green space inside the campus,” Aunt Grace commented as she turned into the visitor parking lot. “Makes it more friendly, you know?”

“For sure,” Leo responded, stunned. This what the campus a top-ranked university _should_ feel like.

They walked by the museum during the campus tour, a small, centrally located building shaded by a few trees, and Eddie sent it such a longing look that Leo spent the next few minutes googling “what do museum curators actually do” instead of paying attention to the tour.

Buoyed by the reassuring Google results, when the tour had ended and they were eating lunch at the food court in the student centre, and Eddie said, “Can we go to the Museum of Natural History after and see if they have fossils? Can we?” Leo shrugged and said, “Sure, why not?”

And that, right there, was his mistake.

The museum itself was a warm and welcoming space, the kind that invited you to get right up close and personal with the objects on display, instead of leaving them behind glass on plain white shelves. Eddie saw some kind of fossil right away and ran to check it out with a level of enthusiasm that would probably brand him as uncool to his teenage buddies, but made Leo grin fondly.

“Are these up to date?” Aunt Grace asked the front desk attendant, picking up a pamphlet. “I heard that the whole place was renovated just last summer.”

The attendant brightened immediately. “Oh yeah, our new space is way better!” Clearly the attendant was a museum studies student, seeing as they seemed to have been just waiting for an excuse to deliver an excited speech about how the new design “really brings us into this millennium,” with a more organic flow through the exhibits, better opportunities for engaging with the artefacts, and a lot of stuff about accessibility and the decolonization work of the Museum 2.0 movement that Leo didn’t understand but that sounded strangely familiar.

“Thanks… Rey, is it?” said Aunt Grace, squinting at the attendant’s nametag.“I heard a rumour that your curator spent some time during the renovation last summer in my hometown, Meryton — do you know if there’s anything in the museum from around there?”

“I’m not sure where she went, but she did bring back some taxidermy birds she acquired from a private collector over the summer. They’re not on display yet, though…”

Leo lost the end of Rey’s sentence as he wandered into the exhibit in a daze. He’d heard about the renovations, of course — sometimes it felt like he’d heard about nothing _but_ these damn renovations all last summer. But he’d thought she was just full of her own importance, hadn’t realized the reno was this extensive, or this vital to the life of the museum. The glow in Rey’s voice as they described the new space —

And the taxidermy birds, that had to be Old Joe Macintyre’s collection. Old Joe claimed they included species you didn’t see anymore, passenger pigeons and other more exotic things, that his great-grandpa had caught and collected way back when. Everyone in Meryton was pretty sick of hearing about those old stuffed birds. When Leo had heard she was going to see them, he’d assumed her goal was mocking them.

Add another mark to the ways he’d been wrong about her.

As Leo was digesting this new information about the woman who had haunted his thoughts for the past four months, he turned the corner and there she was.

Darcy Fitzwilliam.

Not five metres away from him.

Last summer, when he’d been impatient with her because he thought she was a terrible person and snide because he hated that he was attracted to her anyway, he would have put money down that she didn’t do any hard work around her museum, just sat in her office making phone calls to rich donors or something.

But here she was, fixing something in a display with her own two hands, so absorbed in her work that she hadn’t heard him approach.

She was wearing a skirt, the kind that hugged tight to the hips and had a sexy little slit at the back, which Leo assumed existed for the express purpose of driving men like him to distraction. She had fucking fantastic legs, which he had been able to ignore more-or-less successfully all last summer when they’d been bare under her pastel sundresses, but which right now, for some godforsaken reason, made his brain short-circuit even covered up by dark tights.

Her shirt was pale blue, sleeves rolled up, and as she leaned forward to reach into the display the buttons gaped just enough to be suggestive for someone who already had a dirty mind. Someone like Leo, who was consumed by memories of the last time he’d seen Darcy Fitzwilliam. Her mouth on his, her breasts squashed against his chest, her ass in his hands —

Her face when he’d yelled that she was a coldhearted bitch.

Yeah, she probably hated him now, and yeah, it was straight-up justified.

“Oh, there you are, Leo,” said Aunt Grace, coming around the corner, and because he was a massive coward, he swivelled around so he could pretend he hadn’t seen Darcy.

“Eddie’s parked in front of some fossils,” his aunt continued. “Knowing him, he could probably stay there all day, so I’m going to go get one of those audio tours from the front. Want one?”

Leo risked a glance over his shoulder. Darcy was gone.

Honestly, he should leave, now that he knew that Darcy was here. Well, honestly, he shouldn’t have come in the first place. He wasn’t sure if Darcy had seen him, but if she had—he didn’t even want to consider what she would think of him.

“Actually, I might just —“ Leo was spared from formulating an excuse to step outside when someone spoke behind him.

“Leo?”

_Darcy_.

He turned.

And in his head, Elvis Costello crooned, _Sheeeeeee_.

She’d always been gorgeous, at least in a perfectly pressed ice-princess way. All last summer he’d never seen her with so much as a hair out of place or a wrinkle in her dress, even when the rest of them had been sticky and sweaty in the late-July humidity. He’d felt like a dirty peasant every time he’d run into her in his overalls and boots that never quite lost that whiff of manure. It had made him want to mess her up, to see her with some kind of imperfection just to know she was human. He’d seen her like that in November, first when she’d looked droopy and pathetic after being caught out in the rain, and later—oh, later—with her hair all mucked up, lips swollen, face red. Turned out she’d been human the whole time.

Today she looked all crisp and put-together, with that skirt that should probably be illegal and the tidy blue shirt, but she was just imperfect enough to look like a real person ruffled by the demands of a workday rather than a model stepping out of the pages of a magazine. A few strands of hair had escaped her ponytail, her sleeves were wrinkled from where she’d rolled them up earlier, and the knees of her black tights were dusty as if she’d knelt down on the floor somewhere.

She was… beautiful.

And he was staring.

“Darcy, hi,” he said after a too-long moment. He was mortified to find he’d raised his arm in an awkward half-wave, and quickly shoved his hands in his pockets. “I, uh, I didn’t expect to see you.”

“You’re in my museum,” she pointed out dryly.

Jesus.

Fortunately Aunt Grace stepped in over the stuttering response he tried to make. “Are you the curator? Grace Gardiner. We’ve been enjoying the museum so much.”

“Darcy Fitzwilliam, and I’m so glad to hear it.”

The two women shook hands.

“Yeah, Leo mentioned he knew you,” said Aunt Grace. “Or maybe it was Johnny. My nephews. I hear you bought Old Joe Macintyre’s stuffed bird collection?”

“Yes, some interesting specimens, although not in the best condition. We have them in conservation now.”

They discussed the museum, the collection, Eddie’s interest in fossils, while Leo watched in confused silence.

God, what must she think of him? After everything he’d said, after everything _she’d_ said, to show up, like this, on her turf, no warning in advance?

Through his daze he heard Darcy offer to show Eddie around the museum, and followed the two women in Eddie’s direction.

She was being so… nice. Was she always like this? Had she always _been_ like this? Maybe it was just her professionalism… Maybe she really was this generous with all visitors to the museum. It wasn’t possible that it was because of _him_.

Eddie was thrilled to meet an actual, real-life expert, and he hung on Darcy’s every word, peppering her with questions, while she showed him the museum. Leo followed behind with Aunt Grace, still feeling stunned and off-balance. He was careful to keep his elbows tucked in. This close to Darcy in her professional get-up, he felt too big, awkward and clumsy. The last thing he wanted to do was destroy one of her priceless artefacts. Between his mental and physical confusion, he didn’t end up taking in most of Darcy’s undoubtedly educational explanations.

“What’s your favourite fossil that you have?” Eddie asked, eyes wide, once they’d gotten most of the way around the museum.

Darcy smiled at the enthusiastic question, and Leo realized it was the first really genuine smile he’d ever seen on her face. If he’d seen her smile like that over the summer maybe… well, no use thinking about maybes. It was unlikely she’d ever smile at Leo that way, now, after everything.

“Next case. We have an Edmontosaurus skull.”

From Eddie’s gasp, Leo guessed this was a big deal.

“Do you really?”

Still smiling, Darcy led them to another display case. Eddie immediately pressed his face to the glass. “Mom, come see — “

Aunt Grace stepped forward to look at whatever an Edmontosaurus skull was, and Darcy stepped back closer to Leo.

He shifted his weight from foot to foot, uncomfortable. “I, uh. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come. I just — Eddie really wanted to see the fossils, and I thought you’d be in your office or whatever—“

“It’s fine.”

She was looking at him a bit strangely. Well, not unexpected, under the circumstances.

“I’m sorry for—surprising you,” he said.

“It’s fine, really. I’m glad to have met Eddie. Being able to share these collections with people who care about them—that’s why I do what I do.”

Leo nodded, couldn’t think of anything else to say. Darcy was still watching him. Was she looking at his mouth, or was that wishful thinking? Maybe she was just remembering that very misguided kiss back in November. There was no way she could still—

“Did you cut yourself?”

It took him a second to remember the incident this morning, when just the mention of the museum had made him lose control of his body. His face burned and he automatically touched the sore and swollen spot, realizing that must be why she was looking at his mouth so strangely. 

“Uh, yeah,” he muttered. “On the lid of my coffee cup.”

She raised an eyebrow, and he braced himself for an acerbic comment about how he deserved a cut now and again if he was going to destroy the environment with disposable coffee cups. But instead she said, “Those things should come with a warning.”

Leo laughed, surprised, and Darcy smiled at him—not the big smile she’d given Eddie a few minutes ago, it was smaller and a bit hesitant.

And just like that Elvis Costello was back in his head singing, _She may be the face I can’t forget…_

“So,” Leo said, to distract himself from that alarming development. “Edmontosaurus, eh?”

“The jewel of our fossil collection.”

“That’s why it’s your favourite?”

“Yes,” she said, looking down. “And also my mother worked on the dig where they found it.”

Her parents had both passed, Leo remembered. So apparently this hadn’t been a good choice when changing the subject.

“I’m sorry.”

She sent him another small, hesitant smile, and he felt inconveniently warm inside. Elvis Costello was still on a loop on his internal soundtrack. _She may not be what she may seem…._

Leo shook his head to clear it, just as Darcy said, “Do you want to—I mean, if you don’t have plans already—on Wednesdays I always go out for dinner with Chuck and my sister. You’re welcome to join us. My sister is a third year here, so it might be nice for Eddie to talk to her about the student experience.”

“We don’t have plans,” Leo answered slowly.

Being generous with her time and expertise here, in her museum, that could be explained by professional courtesy, by general kindness. But an invitation to dinner? Meeting her sister? The extra offer of help for Eddie? That sounded, at the very least, like friendship. And god, that warmth he was feeling from her smile, it just kept on growing.

“Plans for what?” Aunt Grace asked, and Leo and Darcy both startled and broke eye contact.

“For dinner,” Leo said, aiming for casual, and repeated Darcy’s invitation.

“It’s just a pub downtown,” Darcy assured them. “Nothing fancy, all-ages until 9pm. They have live music on Wednesdays.”

“Live music!” Aunt Grace grinned. “Well, that settles it. We’d love to come, as long as it’s not too early. We can’t check into our Airbnb until five.”

Leo tensed, remembering several diatribes from Darcy about how the culture of app-based side-hustling was destroying the economic prospects of an entire generation and how Airbnb specifically inflated rental costs and contributed to a hugely unfavourable housing market. But all she said was, “Six-thirty?”

* * *

“So,” Aunt Grace said, once they were back in the car and Eddie was busy looking at his phone. “Darcy Fitzwilliam.”

Ah, shit.

“It was nice of her to invite us out,” Leo tried.

No dice.

“When you said this morning something like you met her but you’re not friends — that’s not the whole story, is it?”

He shrugged and hoped he wasn’t blushing. “It’s not an interesting story. She stayed in Meryton last summer. Her friend was really close with John so I ended up spending time with her, but we didn’t get along that well.”

All true, technically.

“Hm,” said Aunt Grace, but she didn’t push. 

Leo wasn’t sure whether or not he was grateful his aunt was letting the subject drop. He hadn’t told anyone about what had happened with Darcy in Hunsford in the fall. He couldn’t bring himself to talk to John, since John and Chuck were part of what they’d yelled at each other about. And it would have been too weird to talk about with Lucas. How would that conversation even have gone? _Hey buddy, I know you’re asexual and all, but I gotta tell you that the woman I’ve been complaining about for months told me I was wrong about everything and then we made out in your front hall and it was hot as fuck?_ Ha. No.

Sometimes Leo could talk to his sisters about his love life, but he knew what they’d say and he didn’t want to hear it. Mary would tell him to get over himself, Kitty would try to turn it into something sweet and sappy, and Lydia—Lydia was not the kind of person you shared private things with if you wanted those things to stay private.

So he hadn’t talked to anyone about Darcy. It was just him, and his confusing feelings, and the unhelpful soundtrack in his head.

* * *

Leo had been a bit nervous that Darcy’s chosen pub would be some kind of hipster place that served weird-ass food on things that weren’t plates. The fact that it was in a basement just off Lambton’s main drag didn’t help. But he was relieved when he walked in to see a normal, if a bit run-down wood-panelled pub, with some beers he recognized on tap. There were pinball machines in one corner and a stage for live music in another.

Darcy waved them over, and Leo did a double take as the soundtrack in his head unhelpfully provided a bit of Gordon Lightfoot: _I can see her looking fast in her faded jeans, she’s a hard-loving woman, got me feeling mean._

“You’re wearing jeans,” he said when he got to her table.

“You sound like you’re accusing me of a crime.”

Last summer, he’d have taken her cool tone and raised eyebrow as a challenge, or searched for a hidden insult. Now… of course it was a joke. How had he missed it before?

“Just never seen you in jeans before. You almost look like one of us regular folks.” They suited her, too, a skinny cut that showed off her ridiculous legs.

She laughed and turned to greet Aunt Grace, and was it really that easy? Had it been that easy the whole time, if he’d played it cool instead of reacting antagonistically to everything she did?

“This is my sister, Georgiana. Georgie,” Darcy corrected herself quickly at the eye-roll of the young woman next to her in glasses and a turtleneck.

The look Georgie gave Leo when they shook hands made him wonder just what Darcy had said about him. Sisters talked about that kind of thing, didn’t they? His youngest two certainly did.

His thoughts were knocked off that track when Aunt Grace greeted Georgie by breaking into a song about a girl named Georgie. Georgie stared for a moment, then said with a shy smile, “Oh! My grandfather used to play that song for me.”

“Mom!” groaned Eddie. “Ignore her, she just sings old songs sometimes. It’s super embarrassing.”

“Moms, eh?” said Leo.

“Oh, you don’t get to say anything, you do it too.”

Since it was true, Leo could only laugh.

Within minutes, Eddie had commandeered Georgie’s attention and they were bent over her phone going through the course calendar while Georgie pointed out the fun profs and the bird courses.

“You’re a big fan of the oldies?” Darcy asked Aunt Grace.

Grace laughed. “You could say that. I love all music, but rock and roll is my real love. I used to have a band and we covered all that old school hard rock stuff. AC/DC, Van Halen, Loverboy, Foreigner, Whitesnake, Trooper, Poison…”

“Guns n’ Roses?” Darcy asked, and Leo felt that warmth in his chest again, thinking of a moment in the rain.

“Exactly. It was a long time ago, before that one.” Aunt Grace tilted her head at Eddie. “But t _his_ one—“ draping her arm around Leo — “This one used to love hanging out and listening to us practice. When he was small he used to sit on the amps, until we were afraid we’d blow his eardrums out. It was very cute.”

“I can imagine,” said Darcy, with a soft smile that made Leo feel warm all over. Jesus.

Aunt Grace seemed to be prepared to break out the embarrassing childhood stories, but the waitress and Chuck Bingley arrived at the same time and the subject was dropped.

Leo would have expected Darcy to order some classy wine, but she surprised him yet again by going with a local craft beer. Georgie, after a cheeky look at her sister, ordered one of the pricey hand-crafted cocktails, something with raspberries and herb-infused gin.

“Oh, is Darcy buying? I’ll have the same then,” Chuck said, and he and Georgie laughed as Darcy fake-smacked him with the menu.

It wasn’t just a change of perspective, Leo decided. She really was more laid-back now. Where had this Darcy been in Meryton?

Chuck was as bright and friendly as ever, but he seemed tired and while he asked about Meryton and the Bennets in general, he didn’t mention John. Leo tried not to read too much into that.

After going over the Meryton gossip, Chuck asked about accommodations, which gave Leo an excuse to rant about how the Airbnb’s owner had desecrated a perfectly good Victorian house. The exterior was mostly maintained, with red brick and decorated gables and the original gingerbread trim, but inside they’d torn down all the walls to make a big open-concept space, which was just a travesty.

Chuck laughed. “You sound just like—what was his name, Darce—that guy from your museum studies program who manages the historic house.”

This kicked off a bunch of descriptions of the quirky characters that Darcy and Chuck had met in academia, which led to funny anecdotes about people who cared way too much about very petty things. Leo had a few to contribute there—that was one thing you definitely got in small towns.

By the time they’d finished eating and the band came on, Leo was feeling the glow of good beer and good food and good company and laughter. The band played a pretty standard bar-band set, and Leo was happy that others in the audience were singing along so that he could do it too without feeling awkward. Darcy surprised him by singing word-for-word to Summer of 69, the last song of the set, and even playing some air guitar when he raised his eyebrow at her.

“You know that one?” he asked afterward, leaning in close to her ear so she’d be able to hear him over the sound of applause.

“Everyone knows that one,” she shot back with a laugh. Her hair smelled like honey, and it brought him back to that night in Hunsford so quickly he felt lightheaded when he sat back.

Aunt Grace’s voice cut through the haze that had fallen over his brain. “I think that’s it for us. Time to make tracks.”

“Oh.” Leo glanced around the table. Darcy still had a ways to go in her beer, and Chuck didn’t look like he was about to budge. But Eddie had his jacket on and was clearly saying his goodbyes to Georgie.

“You can—” Darcy started, and coughed. “If you want to stay for another set I can give you a lift.”

She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“That would be great!” Aunt Grace, suspiciously chipper.

“You wouldn’t mind?” Leo asked.

Darcy finally looked up and caught his eye. “No problem. After all, you’re not done your beer.”

“Well, in that case,” Aunt Grace said, cheerfully. “Don’t stay out too late, Leo, we have to get an early start tomorrow. Darcy, it was great to meet you!”

And she dragged Eddie away so quickly that Leo started to feel a bit manipulated.

Georgie left partway through the second set, claiming that she couldn’t stand any more of the “dad music”. This made both Darcy and Leo throws their cardboard beer coasters at her, but Georgie only laughed. Chuck followed bit later, after clapping Leo on the shoulder and exchanging a series of complicated facial expressions with Darcy.

And then it was just the two of them.

The band ended their second set with Kim Mitchell’s Patio Lanterns, a song Leo loved but strongly associated with the giddiness around a first date that was going well. It was maybe a bit too on the nose, when he was hanging out one-on-one with Darcy. He nodded but couldn’t meet her eye when she stood and said, “Well, should we head out?”

He’d been alone with Darcy before. There was no reason there should be butterflies in his stomach as they walked around the block to her Prius.

He wished the band hadn’t put Patio Lanterns in his head. The truth was, Leo already felt like a damn teenager. As he always seemed to do when he was near Darcy. His feelings were too intense, always simmering right under the surface. He was awkward in his own body, never quite sure what to do with his hands or where to look. It had been there over the summer, but it had manifested as irritability because she annoyed him; now, it was obvious he was under the influence of some kind of hormone-fuelled crush. Or worse.

God. He hadn’t been this messed up over a woman since he’d been—well, the same age Eddie was now, actually—and had embarrassed himself horribly over Leanne Long.

Darcy was focused on navigating them through the dimly lit streets. Leo took the opportunity to just look at her when she couldn’t look back, watching the play of light and shadows across her face.

Inside Leo's head, Kim Mitchell was singing about young love and nervous kisses, and he cleared his throat to drown it out.

“Thanks for inviting us out tonight,” he said. “It was fun. And I think Eddie is leaning towards Pemberley now, thanks in part to Georgie.”

“It was fun,” she agreed. “I liked Grace and Eddie. Surprised I didn’t meet then in Meryton last year.”

“They don’t live there—when I was in high school Aunt Grace moved to the big city to try to make it with her band, and then she had Eddie and decided to stay.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize.”

“Yeah. I was tight with Aunt Grace growing up. She was always the cool young aunt, letting me watch her band practice, taking care of us when Mom was busy with the younger ones and… yeah. My mom, well, you’ve met her. She wasn’t planning on having kids as soon as she finished high school and she didn’t try too hard to hide that she was a bit disappointed in the way her life turned out.”

He forced himself to shut up before he blurted out all his dysfunctional family history. Sometimes he had trouble knowing when to stop.

Darcy was quiet for a few minutes, during which Leo wondered if he’d ruined it all with too much information. But finally she said, “My parents had me when they were working on their PhDs. And having a young child hurt my mother’s career in academia, no question. So she decided not to have any more kids until she got tenure. That’s why there’s 14 years between me and Georgie. My mom never made it seem like she blamed me for making her career more difficult but—it’s hard not to wonder.”

“I know.”

“It’s also… my parents died in a car crash. Did I tell you that? They were driving up to Mom’s dig site with a couple others on the team. The Jeep rolled over and they were all killed. I was only 23. And I’ll never know, if she hadn’t been trying to navigate the academic job field with a baby, how much faster would she have moved through the ranks. Would she even have been at that dig?”

Her voice was so lonely. Leo wished things between them weren’t so strange so he could touch her.

“Darcy—“

“I know, I know. It’ll be eleven years this summer, so I know it’s not helpful to play the what-if game.”

“That’s—“

“Let’s talk about something else. Tell me more about Grace’s band.”

It was an obvious dodge, but he couldn’t blame her for not wanting to talk about it anymore. And… eleven years this summer meant ten years last summer, the summer he’d found her distant and unpleasant. He hadn’t know, couldn’t have known, but he felt guilty all the same.

Leo let himself be sidetracked by her request, delighted her with a description of being lulled to sleep as a toddler by the sweet strains of AC/DC covers, even sang a few bars of Ride On to prove that AC/DC had some slow songs.

“How come you never did that last summer?” she asked.

“What?”

“Burst into song when the mood strikes you, as Eddie implied that you like to do.”

He shrugged. “The mood didn’t strike me, I guess.”

The truth was that none of the songs that had come to mind with her had been flattering. His mental soundtrack had been along the lines of “She ain’t pretty, she just looks that way”. He didn’t want to think about that now, not with everything he’d learned about her. Not with the way he’d started to feel all soft inside when she talked about herself.

“Thank you, again,” he said as they pulled up in front of the Airbnb. “For everything. I really appreciate it, and Eddie was so thrilled.”

She gave him a half-smile. “No worries. It’s always nice to see the museum through fresh eyes.”

“Darcy…”

She looked up at him, a bit shyly, the moonlight and the streetlights casting strange shadows across her face, and his breath caught, his stomach swooped. Her lips parted under his gaze. He leaned forward, slowly, inhaling the honey scent of her hair, not wanting to make any sudden movements that could shatter this perfect moment —

His phone rang.

They both jumped back.

“Are you going to answer that?” Darcy asked, clearing her throat.

Since the moment was gone, Leo picked up his phone, frowning when he realized it was John. Unusual for him to be calling so late, and uncharacteristic to be calling instead of texting in the first place. Leo’s first thought, as he swiped to answer, was that John must have found out somehow that he’d seen Chuck.

“Hey John.”

“Leo. Thank God.” John’s voice was rough and strained, immediately setting Leo on edge.

“What’s wrong?”

Darcy turned sharply to face him at that, so he was holding her gaze when he heard his brother say, “You have to come home. Lydia’s been arrested for attempted murder.”

**Author's Note:**

> Well then!
> 
> Music referenced: 
> 
> Elvis Costello - She (also where the title is from) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O040xuq2FR0  
> Gordon Lightfoot - Sundown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv8zyBi4ZXk  
> The Seekers - Georgy Girl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGyixX7QJVE  
> Guns n' Roses - November Rain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SbUC-UaAxE  
> Bryan Adams - Summer of 69 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFjjO_lhf9c  
> Kim Mitchell - Patio Lanterns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILAdKBicMc  
> AC/DC - Ride On https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFUGvdxuQGQ  
> Northern Pikes - She Ain’t Pretty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWj_kn_nJP0
> 
> And yes - there will be more to come. I can't just leave Lydia to languish in jail, can I? :P


End file.
